UK road surfaces

[Cudzoziemiec]

Reporting holes etc on Fix My Street: I reported a missing cover, leaving an open hole, only about 10cm but on a bend on a steep hill, on 22nd April. I've just received an email "job raised". On 23rd April it was "under investigation". I wonder when, if at all, it will be "fixed"?

[S2L]

Reporting holes etc on Fix My Street: I reported a missing cover, leaving an open hole, only about 10cm but on a bend on a steep hill, on 22nd April. I've just received an email "job raised". On 23rd April it was "under investigation". I wonder when, if at all, it will be "fixed"?

Next time something breaks on your bike, take a photo of such part by the hole and ask for compensation... 

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

Do you guys just moan or actually report problems to the local authorities?
IME councils are very quick at fixing potholes, because failing to do so might result in them being sued.

There is a nice online facily called fillthathole

https://www.fillthathole.org.uk/

I use fillthathole as I mentioned. This will result in a bunch of blacktop being bodged into the exact hole specified with the 90 other impact craters on the same bit of road ignored. Basically they'll cover their backs with the one hole reported so unless you have 2 hours to spare hovering around an a road documenting individual potholes you are on a hiding to nothing.

+1

Those sections of patched up roads are the ones which gave me the most hammering on my ride into London today.  It costs quite a bit of money to patch one hole, you need to raise a works order, send a crew out, set up the temporary traffic lights, fix the hole, and complete the works order.  If we report all the holes we see we can get the councils to spend their entire meagre budget on fixing holes and not replacing worn out road.  Having said that, I did report the crater on the A264.  That was a shocker.

[Chamford Sideplate]

The problem I'm having this season is saddle sores

Deep tissue damage, like bruising rather than broken skin? If so, I suffered from that for years. Once I could afford to replace my harsh aluminium frame with something more comfortable, that could take tyres wider than 23mm the problem stopped.

[alwyn]

Those sections of patched up roads are the ones which gave me the most hammering on my ride into London today.  It costs quite a bit of money to patch one hole, you need to raise a works order, send a crew out, set up the temporary traffic lights, fix the hole, and complete the works order.  If we report all the holes we see we can get the councils to spend their entire meagre budget on fixing holes and not replacing worn out road.  Having said that, I did report the crater on the A264.  That was a shocker.

It doesn’t quite work like that. Pothole repairs come from the revenue budget, resurfacing comes from the capital budget. You can’t raid one to pay for the other without taking the whole thing back to the council’s Council for approval.

[mmmmartin]

Well, after completing my 10th SR this year, I've decided not to ride any more long or multi-day audax in the UK........

The reason? The appalling state of UK road surfaces........

By way of contrast, I have just come back from a Raid Pyrenean in France where over 90% of the ride was on smooth tarmac. Literally there were a few stretches in towns plus one of 5km and one of 10km that were not, and the surface quality was still better than UK average. I guess that is what comes of proper investment in infrastructure and trained people who know what they are doing.

Am deeply saddened by this post because it is exactly how I now feel. Just say, 10 years ago the surfaces seemed to be better but now they're really poor. By contrast, in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands (only places I can comment on really) the surfaces are just about perfect. Not to mention that drivers of all types of vehicle seem to be more careful around cyclists. The few audaxes I've ridden in Belgium have been really enjoyable so I might look over there. Was in the Netherlands for the Elfstedentocht and one of the seven in our group did claim to spot one pothole. In 240k.
And I've given up banging my head against a brick wall trying to campaign for cycling infrastructure. Our local MP set up a "cycling forum" a few years ago and it met a dozen or more times. Not a single drop of paint has been put down anywhere as a result.
Sad to say, but there we are.

[simonp]

The fetish for top-dressing results in uneven road surfaces being left uneven for many years, as it's never scraped back and re-laid properly. A thin layer over the top won't level it off - so even without potholes the surface is constantly uneven. It's tiring, and it must be slowing us down. I suspect I'm losing 2kph on the flat on my local roads.

[rogerzilla]

Road surfaces are as likely as cars to kill cyclists now, I reckon.  Many accidents occur when someone falls off after hitting a pothole and is promptly run over.

[andyoxon]

A-road round here has been fully 'resurfaced', with a very thin coat of bitumen slurry and gravel.  All the previous underlying bumps can be felt, but not seen very easily.  Really poor.  The appearance of something having been done, seems to top all.

[Kim]

A-road round here has been fully 'resurfaced', with a very thin coat of bitumen slurry and gravel.  All the previous underlying bumps can be felt, but not seen very easily.

They've recently done that to some of my local lanes.  It's an improvement on the usual surface dressing with the swathes of loose gravel that doesn't stick, but as you say, it mostly serves to disguise the bumps and holes that they haven't fixed.  Which is fine if you know it like the back of your hand and can follow the safe line through the bumps, but potentially quite nasty if you encounter it on an unfamiliar road.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Different national approaches to road surfaces are curious. I've ridden on some horrendous surfaces (and also some perfect ones) in Poland and India, but they had different faults. In India it was huge, jagged holes and loose stone like the ballast on a railway line; in Poland, more often than holes you had deep longitudinal ruts caused by overloaded lorries and poor tar melting in summer (nationwide HGV bans were a thing on the hottest summer days). But tar and chippings is rather British.

[GrahamG]

I liked the recent(ish) stat in Private Eye that pointed out the cost estimate for repairing every pothole/road defect in the UK, and the far greater amount that would have been collected in fuel duty had it not been repeatedly frozen for the best part of a decade. Once again vulnerable road users suffer so that the government isn't perceived to be robbing the poor motorist and, of course, 'hard working families'(TM).

[Exit Stage Left]

But tar and chippings is rather British.

It's called Chipseal in New Zealand, where it was first developed in 1932. It's called that in Australia and the USA, where it's heavily used for rural roads. The alternative isn't asphalt concrete, that's the name for 'tarmac', but unsealed gravel roads. US motorists pay nothing like the roads budget in taxes, so some cash-strapped authorities have taken to de-paving, i.e. returning them to gravel. https://www.wired.com/2016/07/cash-strapped-towns-un-paving-roads-cant-afford-fix/

Such moves would be politically unacceptable in the UK, where the combined tax take from VED, Fuel Excise and VAT is three times the money spent on roads. With devolved budgets for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it could be argued that with less tax available from each motorist per mile of road, they could start de-paving roads there. But I can't see that being popular.

Much of the PBP route is 'chipseal', and a search on PBP and chipseal brings up lots of references from US riders saying it's just like home. The UK term for it is 'surface dressing'.

[zakalwe]

Well, after completing my 10th SR this year, I've decided not to ride any more long or multi-day audax in the UK........

The reason? The appalling state of UK road surfaces........

By way of contrast, I have just come back from a Raid Pyrenean in France where over 90% of the ride was on smooth tarmac. Literally there were a few stretches in towns plus one of 5km and one of 10km that were not, and the surface quality was still better than UK average. I guess that is what comes of proper investment in infrastructure and trained people who know what they are doing.

Am deeply saddened by this post because it is exactly how I now feel. Just say, 10 years ago the surfaces seemed to be better but now they're really poor. By contrast, in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands (only places I can comment on really) the surfaces are just about perfect. Not to mention that drivers of all types of vehicle seem to be more careful around cyclists. The few audaxes I've ridden in Belgium have been really enjoyable so I might look over there. Was in the Netherlands for the Elfstedentocht and one of the seven in our group did claim to spot one pothole. In 240k.
And I've given up banging my head against a brick wall trying to campaign for cycling infrastructure. Our local MP set up a "cycling forum" a few years ago and it met a dozen or more times. Not a single drop of paint has been put down anywhere as a result.
Sad to say, but there we are.

Having recently moved to Bavaria, I've been amazed by the quality of the roads here.  When I mention it to people who haven't lived in the UK, they don't know what I'm talking about.

[Peat]

@andyoxon - That resurfaced stretch from Uffington you pictured on pg1 nearly had me off last week. I foolishly thought a new road surface could be smooth. The transition onto it was so harsh that my arms were knocked off the elbow pads of my TT bars and i landed on the bar/stem with a big wobble across the road.

IIRC, VED takings will be ring-fenced for road maintenance as of next year. It won't make it better, it'll just bring the 'you don't pay road tax' lot closer to reality. 

Speaking of the fillthathole website. I was a frequent reporter, but quickly lost faith in it. Having reported a sunken drain an accompanying stretch of potholes, a ticket was raised but was told a few days later that it had been imnspected and the job  ticket closed.

I have an idea i'm yet to action. For every report I raise, attach a picture of the hole with an 8" pink dildo in it. Have a twitter/instagram account to post the same thing and tag the council. "Please see attached image. 8" pink dildo for scale." I would hope for a small viral success that makes it to the local rag and perhaps, just perhaps, shames them into filling a few holes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

IIRC, VED takings will be ring-fenced for road maintenance as of next year. It won't make it better, it'll just bring the 'you don't pay road tax' lot closer to reality. 

Only for 'strategic routes' I think, ie motorways and a few major A roads. Contrary to some opinion, it probably isn't enough for the entire road network. And only in England and Wales, not sure why that is.

I have an idea i'm yet to action. For every report I raise, attach a picture of the hole with an 8" pink dildo in it. Have a twitter/instagram account to post the same thing and tag the council. "Please see attached image. 8" pink dildo for scale." I would hope for a small viral success that makes it to the local rag and perhaps, just perhaps, shames them into filling a few holes.

I remember someone did something similar with little models of gnomes and so on.

[Exit Stage Left]

IIRC, VED takings will be ring-fenced for road maintenance as of next year. It won't make it better, it'll just bring the 'you don't pay road tax' lot closer to reality. 

Only for 'strategic routes' I think, ie motorways and a few major A roads. Contrary to some opinion, it probably isn't enough for the entire road network. And only in England and Wales, not sure why that is.

Scotland hasn't got enough cars paying VED in relation to the costs of the trunk network to cover the outgoings. The same is probably true of the South West, and other thinly populated regions. The national network is subsidised by those in the most congested areas. Motorists from cities who do Audaxes at least get some value from the roads they subsidise. That could be a selling point.

[madamemugwump]

I sympathise with the OP. After 10 years in France, I returned to the UK (with my bike) for a year. I really did not enjoy cycling that year, partly weight of traffic but largely the state of the roads. Add the 2 together and it's a dangerous combo (as mentioned above; falling into the path of vehicles) Consequently, I did way less cycling than I would normally - in fact, I effectively stopped.

Obviously, being familiar with a different environment might exaggerate, and you do get used to things, but I nonetheless found it profoundly disturbing. I could completely understand someone not wanting to cycle in the UK (exact location dependant obviously)

[Nick Firth]

I was thinking about this thread as I was doing a 200k calendar ride through Lincolnshire yesterday, it rained continuously all day making it almost impossible to see the potholes & the circle of spray paint they circle them with, gone are the days where you could ride through a puddle confident that there wouldn't be a 6" deep crater hidden in there, plus add to the constant stream of nose to tail traffic overtaking as they get in some early Christmas shopping makes it hard to ride round the puddles, I spent a lot of time on the pavement & swerving to avoid impact punctures in the built up areas, my arse is still in shreds, Assos cream lasts about 4 hours.

[suffolkngood]

It's not the holes that bother me it's the surface. It's simply harsh. So.etimes off road is smoother. That's not an exaggeration.

[Exit Stage Left]

Surfaces have got worse, but there are some strong observer effects. When newcomers to cycling get serious, they buy a tack pump, and inflate their tyres to something over 100psi. They then start going on routes around rural lanes, and think that surface-dressing is some sort of recent austerity measure.

One thing that has happened over the last 20 years is that cars have got a lot wider, and courier/ supermarket delivery vans have increased. That means that what were previously verges have been incorporated into the roadway, but there's never been any preparation done on that ad-hoc widening.